Abstract

In 1990 the Threshold report (1990) laid bare the inadequacies of an education
system that failed to support the linguistic and conceptual challenges that
black primary school children faced when they made the transition from their
primary language to English as a the language of learning and teaching. Now,
ten years later, the same author considers the lot of black primary school
children to see whether the linguistic and conceptual challenges facing these
children are being met under the new educational dispensation. The author
argues that weaknesses in the new curriculum, at both a theoretical and a
practical level, have led to the neglect of basic literacy and numeracy
development in the Foundation and Intermediate Phases.